I still need to get a couple mannequins. I think about this often, at least daily. Well, maybe every other day. They’ll provide some kind of ambience, some kind of atmosphere that I need. In my house. Preferably the dining room.

No, there’s nothing sexual or weird going on behind the scenes here. I’m not gonna drill any holes in them or have different outfits based on different seasons. I may, however, throw a scarf around one if it’s chilly outside. Something to keep them looking current and fresh.

Think of them more as art pieces, as sculptures, and less as companions. I’m not J.F. Sebastian over here. They won’t have backstories or names or be scantily dressed.

Having a set has been on my mind ever since I was a kid and had my first run in with a JCPenney mannequin while shopping with my mom. Well, my mom was shopping and I was wandering around aimlessly. Because there’s nothing to do in the women’s section when you’re a 10 year old boy other than to try and get lost in rack after rack of clothes you despise touching and will most certainly never wear.

Daydream of a Roger Moore style spy chase through the ladies tops. Avoid whatever KGB agent that had tracked my location to this particular department store on this particular day.

And then I bumped into a mannequin. Fairly hard but not on purpose for sure. I was looking one way and going another. This was all well before I stopped seeing the world just from my eyes and only ever paid attention to what was right in front of me.

And then the female mannequin all but fell over. Luckily, I was the hero with my 007 reflexes and saved that day, saved the towering figure from the public shame of lying face down on dense carpet made for heavy traffic.

Somehow I twisted its arm around backwards and upside down or something. But with my superior mechanical and fashionable skills, I was able to repose the mannequin into a style, into a position that was fitting for the outfit. Obviously those store designers had little sense for fashion in the first place. Well, I guess I shouldn’t judge too harshly. We were only two miles from rural Iowa and all the farmland they had to offer.

Anyways, I don’t think my life will be complete until I have at least two mannequins. I need a pair minimum. One male and one female. So they can keep each other company. And having just one mannequin would be weird. And having a whole fleet would be bizarre.[1] And not in a good way.

And I can’t buy them online. Having mannequins shipped to your house would definitely be cause for alarm. I need them from like a Sears that’s going out of business or so. But they can’t be scoffed or marred. Seeing the white, chipped plaster (or whatever it is) underneath is just tacky.